The Design

The next big hurdle was designing our dream house.  Sounds simple enough, right?  The whole design process was actually really interesting and FUN!  Stephen and I agreed on pretty much everything.  We'd seen so many houses that we knew exactly what we wanted.  We added in a few cool features that we each hoped for and our dream house was created.  We basically found a floor plan we liked a lot and tweaked it about 25%.  When it came time to select exterior doors, windows, pavers, landscaping, house color, roof tile style, color and material choice of columns, window surrounds, courtyard gate design....it got a little bit more overwhelming.  All of these things had to be decided first and then submitted to our HOA before we could get a permit from the city to build.  Somehow we figured it all out and our HOA approved it after 9 LONG weeks.  They did suggest a few cosmetic exterior changes which we ended up really liking so we were happy.  The major decision we made at this point was to do an owner-built home.  In Arizona you do not have to have a contractors license to build your own home.  We decided I would take control of the home building process and save us some money along the way.  We found an amazing man in our stake named Gordon Ray who agreed to be a project manager and help us get all the subs we need, as well as lend his expertise and experience as much or as little as we needed.  It's become a huge full-time job for me, which may be just what I needed since Jaren has started school full-time.  So far, it's the best job in the world though...overseeing our family's dream home!

After the approval process with the HOA finally was finished, we submitted to the Town of Gilbert for a building permit and continued to work with our bank for a construction loan.  I'll just gloss over this part because it was a huge headache and suffice to say I think we made several pacts with the devil as well as selling our first born grandchild in order to secure this loan.  It's gotta be worth it in the end though, right?